


Spaces Between

by ColinFilth



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Aggressively Small Penis, Alternate title: Pussy put his ass to sleep - now he calling me Nyquil, Anal Fingering, Bickering, Comeplay, Dirty Talk, Drift Side Effects, Erectile Dysfunction, Explicit Sexual Content, Flaccid Blow Jobs, Flaccid Hand Jobs, Foot Fetish, Foot Jobs, Getting Together, Ghost Drifting, Hand Jobs, Kissing, Love, M/M, Mania, Mental Instability, Multiple Orgasms, Multiple Sclerosis, Oral Sex, Rimming, Small Penis, Smoking, Telepathic Bond, Trans Male Character, Vaginal Fingering, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:09:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColinFilth/pseuds/ColinFilth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt had not realised, somehow, that the world not ending would mean it would stubbornly keep on turning without waiting for him to catch up.</p>
<p>So what? He's a scientist. He'll do some catching up of his own and lose himself in the labyrinth of his and Hermann's brains and their bodies.</p>
<p>This is absolutely not to be considered hiding, not that they can hide much anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was started just shy of one year ago and filled up a notebook of just writing notes and countless evenings. It is finished. I will be publishing one part every day until Saturday, August 8th. 
> 
> Many, many thanks to my holy trinity, Camille, Jo, and Julia, for their help betaing this monster.
> 
> And a short disclaimer: what Newt decides to call his genitals applies to him and him alone. Do not go around expecting anyone, transman or else, to call their privates the same, and do not go around asking trans people what they call their junk. If you don't know, you probably shouldn't be thinking about it.
> 
> Title from "[The Spaces Between](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oghSI_fmmg)" by Expatriate: _And I wished upon a shooting star / Thought about the spaces between / Two hearts that can't ever, ever let go_.

After the world had not ended, after Newt had been dragged to medical by Hermann who held a vice-like grip around his wrist, after they had been as thoroughly examined as they could have been when the personnel of medical, the whole Shatterdome, the entire city really, was roaring with relief and celebration, Newt found himself looking up at Hermann as he climbed the few steps up to his door.

Found himself more staring than looking, really, unable to shake off the feeling of Hermann’s fingers around his wrist but mostly, most strangely, of his own skin beneath Hermann’s fingers, that he had felt at his fingertips as acutely as he would have if he had been the one with his hand clenched around Hermann’s wrist. Afterwards, Newt had looked for reasons to stroke his fingers along Hermann’s skin, to feel this so far barely-felt connection and most surprisingly, because he wanted to — in all honesty had wanted to for years now, and the faraway sounds of Hermann’s brain told him the same. In the same way Newt would sometimes remember inconsequential events like listening to a long-forgotten song in the car with his Dad years ago, he recalled clearly and simply Hermann’s own musings of what would happen, and how, if they were to touch, to kiss, to get intimate in even more ways than two people thrown together for five years in a confined space could.

But the drift — the way it made Hermann’s brain fit snugly alongside and inside Newt’s — was more intimacy than he could have ever wished for, even with the hundreds of ways he has been falling in love with Hermann over the course of twelve years. All of the thousands of ways he could have kept falling in love with him, all of them secret and filthy, fierce little flames several times rekindled that bit at his skin and set his soul ablaze.

How embarrassing to think Hermann has seen it all, if not felt it all, to realize that Newt’s brain was entwined around Hermann’s as well, and even more so because Newt wants nothing more but to tip his chin up and make Hermann bow under the weight of his twisted brain and to revel in the harsh cruelty of his own thoughts so forcefully thrust upon Hermann.

And the corridors are noisy and empty, with all personnel happily, joyously celebrating the fact that they have a vast endlessness of time before them now, more time than Newt knows what to do with or has even planned for.

“Well, are you not off to celebrate? Isn’t it what you’ve longed for all your life?”

Hermann’s voice rings loud and clear and Newt is almost startled. Hermann’s door is cracked open now, his body turned towards it as he clearly waits for Newt to leave so he can retreat inside. His hand rests on the handle and Newt feels the cold metal under his fingertips. When Newt takes a step towards him, Hermann leans back almost imperceptibly, and this is the eleventieth way Newt falls in love with him, right there and then.

Newt climbs the two steps and he remembers, passingly, the fantasies he’d started harbouring in his late teens, surrounded by people too old for him who praised his brain but looked away uncomfortably from his body. The base, filthy fantasies he would conjure in his mind late at night with the buzz of a toy against his clit and the haze of testosterone clouding his mind and his lips moving silently to shape words he would never, could never utter in real life. The way he pictured himself walking up to a man — one tall, dark, and Newt himself would be a seductor, a predator, a sexual being — and getting up close and personal and whispering:

“I don’t wanna sleep alone tonight.”

The moment he says it, he sees the brief flash of recognition in Hermann’s tired eyes, and he knows that Hermann knows he saw it.

Newt feels beneath his skull, in the crevices where Hermann’s mind has managed to find room, all the decisions Hermann thinks of making, from going inside and slamming the door in Newt’s face to kissing him there and then, and he feels their hand (Hermann’s hand, someone’s hand at least) closing and opening and the sensation makes his fingers tingle. In the end, Hermann pushes his door open wider and stares at Newt until he goes inside. He doesn’t move until he hears the door closing, the rubber tip of Hermann’s cane tapping on the floor as he walks to face Newt.

It’s quiet behind the heavy metal door, and the restless creatures that inhabit Newt’s body and mind want to say something, do something, anything. They buzz and whisper right beneath the finest layers of his skin, just under ( _within_ , the bruised places of his brain pulse out) the ink, urge him to take action, take charge, take Hermann and act out what he thought of ten years ago with crumpled paper all over his bed and his naked body atop the spills of Hermann’s thoughts.

In the end Newt doesn’t have to. How ravishingly idiotic of him, to use moves he’d rehearsed times and times again in his head on the very same guy who had been, minutes ago, in that very same head — and how smart, too.

Because he doesn’t have to do anything. He handed Hermann the very tools of his own demise and Hermann has never been anything but fastidious and dedicated and when he leans down to kiss Newt, there is a tiny flicker of Newt himself, of his fantasies, of the way he would wish to be swept off his feet and accepted when he would offer himself bare and bow-tied as a present. There is the unconscious knowledge in Hermann’s mind that this was what should and would follow.

And Newt can’t disagree — this is twelve years in the making, somehow, twelve years of the weirdest, ugliest foreplay in all of human history, and he can do nothing but kiss Hermann back.

Hermann tastes of blood and sweat and chalk on his upper lip, and tea and cigarettes on his tongue. There is none of his “own personal taste” or whatever romance writers insisted on in novels Newt read solely because every book in existence had to be read. He doesn’t wind his arms around Newt and his hands stay tense, one atop his cane and the other at his side. It doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter because they are only kissing and already it is too much. If Newt felt overwhelmed by the feel of his own skin at his own fingertips, by the sensations Hermann himself felt reverberating through his body, it was nothing compared to this. This is no ember floating and biting at his skin, this is the great fire of lightning striking dead and dry wood. This is the soft tendrils of Hermann’s brain causing a short circuit and Newt is burning. He feels Hermann’s lips beneath his and his own lips beneath Hermann’s, time and time again, sensations echoing helplessly until he’s shaking. This is too much — as soon as Newt licks at Hermann’s lip he’s keening, his hands shooting up to grab at Hermann’s hair and find some support.

This is possibly the worst decision he could have taken, because as soon as he pulls even the slightest bit on Hermann’s hair, Newt feels his scalp burn and tingle in response. He does it again and Hermann gasps against his lips, pulls away from the kiss and sets his forehead firmly against Newt’s, panting and trembling.

In the knotted places of their brain ( _brains_ , Hermann's voice says in his head) Newt can feel Hermann's confusion through the tether between them, everything travelling like sounds and vibrations through the string of a tin can telephone. Years ago, Hermann probably would have cut the string — and Newt would have provided the scissors. Now he presses his forehead against Hermann’s harder, as if their brains were not already squashed together sous-vide in the garret of Newt’s skull, as if this were not already enough. Now he longs for the touch of Hermann’s hands still unmoving at his sides, in the ways he had, has been for years at this point. His mind supplies a distant image of himself bare and exposed, Hermann’s mouth latched at his neck and bruising it red and purple.

Newt has never thought about this before.

He backs away from Hermann to get a better look at him. Gentle waves of embarrassment flood Newt’s body when Hermann realizes what just slithered out of his brain and into Newt’s, and he turns his head away, tipping his chin up. His eyelashes flutter against his cheeks and Newt wants nothing more than to follow the butterfly-like movement of those eyelashes with his lips. He doesn’t.

Instead Newt conjures the image in his head, the way he would if he were alone in his bed with his pants around his ankles and his hand between his legs, thinks about the soft-looking skin just below Hermann’s eyes and the sharp angles of his cheekbones. He thinks about fitting the curve of a kiss to the acute bones and following the slope of his jaw to align the lines of his lips to those of Hermann’s. He thinks of Hermann’s hands and of all of the places where they are currently not touching him. He thinks of all the quiet little things his mind whispers to him late at night when he has his legs clamped tight together and pinpricks of want and need rolling like lazy waves in his belly, the soft hum of it like static. He searches for Hermann’s eyes.

“We should,” Hermann begins, his gaze firmly planted in Newt’s. His mouth is open, but no sound is coming out. He thumps his cane against the floor, once, then takes a step forward and raises a hand to Newt’s face.

Hermann’s thoughts are a blurry smear of confusion where they overlap and conflict which each other and with Newt’s — _go back to medical, this is not normal, get into bed and get some sleep, get into bed and get into each other’s bodies to match the patched mess of our heads, stop this_ — but Newt can work with this. Newt is used to this.

In the end, in place of being able to shut down Hermann’s brain, he grabs his face between his hands ( _fingers at his own skull, pressing against his jaw_ ) and kisses him again. As soon as their lips touch Hermann sags against him with something like relief and surrender, and Newt finds himself scrambling for purchase, slamming his hand against the nearby desk. Hermann gasps at the sound and his head tilts to the side, where Newt’s hand just left his skin. He breathes against Newt’s lips for a moment and his breath is stale, his tongue heavy from years of tea and cigarettes and minutes of puking hours earlier. Newt kisses him again anyway. Would have kissed him even after too-bitter tea, after a smoke, after he had woken up, after Hermann had screamed at him; would have kissed him right after the drift if Hermann had let him, really, with blood still dripping from his nose and stomach acid still sitting on his tongue.

“This is disgusting, Newton,” Hermann admonishes with the gentlest brush of his nose against Newt’s, and laughter bubbles up Newt’s throat.

“More than,” Newt begins, and he searches for the hidden caches inside Hermann’s head like a robber sifting through drawers for valuables. “More than my tongue, my fingers, in your ass?” Hermann makes a little sound in the back of his throat and Newt continues, “my lips on your hole with my fingers holding you open for me, I know, I’ve seen, you’d get your fingers wet and press them against your ass and picture me.”

“As you would be one to talk,” Hermann says, and his hands shoots up to grab Newt’s wrist, like he’s stopping a misbehaving child. Newt’s fingertips tingle. “The things your brain has cooked up, Newton. Is this what you want? Was that what you wanted when you served me this ridiculous, preposterous line… What comes next? Remind me, my dear, what comes next?”

Hermann lets go of his wrist and the absence of it is somehow more perceptible. His long fingers stroke down Newt’s torso for a second, over the buttons, down to his pants. A nail taps his fly in a way that’s almost contemplating. Newt’s fingers slip over the smooth surface of the desk as Hermann casually pops the button open and lowers the zipper. He’s businesslike and focused, no hesitation and no fumbling, just gets the task done with nary a look at Newt’s face. Hermann finally looks at him when he slips his hand inside Newt’s pants, lips parted open and eyes wide and fierce. He shivers when his fingers touch Newt’s clit and his eyes flutter shut for a second before he moves closer, fitting a leg between Newt’s.

“Is this it? Your faceless man shoves his hand down your trousers and plays with you while whispering all sorts of shameful, filthy things? Is this how it goes, Newton?”

Hermann’s fingers move carefully against his clit and everything is slippery already. Newt can feel the wetness at his labia and at his fingertips and he’s panting in seconds, moving his hips minutely and ignoring the soft keening sounds escaping from his mouth. Something in his head begs for Hermann to talk some more, and Hermann huffs out a little shock of laughter before stroking intently over his clit.

“Remind me what they would call you,” Hermann says in a strained voice with his nails digging just so on each side of Newt’s clit. “Those men, in your fantasies - please remind me what garbage your mind would conjure to get you off.”

“A little faggot,” Newt gasps out, arms straining behind him. “An easy hole to fuck, a bitch in heat, a greedy cunt.”

Newt feels a distinct lick of embarrassment and arousal up Hermann’s spine in the most tender little shiver, and he closes his eyes. A small flurry of thoughts trickles down from Hermann's brain to his: things his mouth wants to say but that his mind won't let him speak out, orders and praise and all the dirty things carefully contained beneath years of restrain and control, slowly coming undone and left free to barrel down his throat. But, hotwired to Hermann’s brain as he is, Newt hears them all, jumbled and messy like dozens of voices in a crowded room, like in his own brain, and he can barely breathe with it. _Open your eyes_ and _tell me more_ and _be quiet_ and _you are exquisite_.

“Was that what you wanted, Newton?” Hermann says instead, in the most withering voice, pinching sharply at Newt’s clit. It swells beneath his touch. “Were those the things your filthy mind so desperately thought up to make you come?”

“A little more,” Newt grits out, pushing his hips against Hermann’s fingers, grinding into his skin and into his own. His fingertips feel wet and warm where they push against the cold desk.

Newt feels like a pot of milk brought to a boil and left on the stove unwatched, slowly bubbling over then suddenly splashing scalding froth all over when the temperature point gets too high. It seems that if he spills his thoughts he will scald Hermann to the bone. But Hermann's fingers shift over his clit and Newt moans and something in Hermann's breath hitches. Newt's hips stutter of their own accord and he remembers, faintly, as if it had happened years ago, that Hermann hijacked the mainline to his brain himself and he feels just as distantly the faint but ever-present worry he feels towards Newt. One of their brains supplies the grasp of Hermann’s arms around him hours ago and the other offers the gentle brush of Hermann’s breath at his jaw seconds from now.

Hermann shifts again next to him and Newt opens hazy, unfocused eyes just in time to see Hermann lean in and brush his lips against the stubbly skin of his jaw, pressing something that is not quite a kiss there. A sudden, slow wave of arousal burns its way down from Newt’s heart to his cunt and Hermann shivers next to him. He turns his head, just the slightest bit, and their eyes meet.

There is desire in Hermann’s big eyes — desire for Newt’s mismatched, scribbled body and his equally mismatched and scribbled brain and the desire to do him right, to do just right, give him exactly what he wants and it’s such an enormous contrast to the filthy, demeaning things Hermann has told him that Newt has to close his eyes again. Slowly, ever-so-carefully, he lets his hips start to move again, forgets the fantasy-Newt and his easy-to-please body that just wants to be touched by anyone. He searches for the pressure of Hermann’s fingers, finds it at the tip of his own hands and grinds against it, riding his hand and turning his head blindly to bump his nose against Hermann’s.

“Like this,” he whispers, hesitantly raising a hand to wrap around Hermann’s and guide him, his fingers around his own wrist, _is his touch really so firm_ , _little bit less_ , his nails scrape at Hermann’s skin and Hermann’s hand stutters just right-

With Hermann’s brain in his head it’s so easy to escape his own, to burrow in the clean, gentle places of it and give in, to stop feeling like a piece of incomprehensible machinery and to reduce the universe to Hermann’s body. Their brains and their hearts and the joint place of their minds make Lagrange points and the orbit is perfect, easy and predictable and Newt doesn’t have to think about his own place when he has one in Hermann’s head. Newt can ride the movement and be nothing but an echo chamber of sensations buzzing inside Hermann’s arms, his skin made of superconductor and his mouth a place for Hermann to rest his lips, his thighs, his cunt, made to fit for the fragile kindling of Hermann’s fingers.

“Tell me what else you need,” Hermann murmurs against Newt’s jaw and his fingers twitch against his clit and this is it, as soon as Hermann’s fingers flick at his clit it’s like he’s flipped a switch to make him come.

Newt keens and moans and lets himself drop against the desk, anchored and drowned by the gentle rub of Hermann against him, shaking and pulsing until it starts to hurt and even then — even then he greedily chases the aftershocks and blindly sends his lips to find Hermann’s. Even the tiniest, barest brush is a tidal wave pulling him under. Newt gasps against his mouth with his nails digging into Hermann’s wrist and cutting echoing bites in Newt’s own skin.

When Newt opens his eyes, Hermann is watching him, slack-jawed and intent, with his worry licking up inside Newt’s stomach, and he averts his gaze.

There are words taking shape in Hermann’s brain and tumbling down to tug at his lips, _why did this just happen_ and _why is this happening_ and _are we okay_ and _are you okay?_ He’s still staring at Newt and Newt’s jeans are still open, he can still feel the stickiness of his own jizz on Hermann’s fingertips (his fingertips? Someone’s fingertips, Hermann’s projected fingertips, someone’s skin-to-nerves-to-brain system, anyway-). Amongst the mess of things he wants from Hermann, worry and concern are the least of them, so far down on the list they might not even be on it at all. So Newt slithers closer to Hermann and crooks his lips into a smile and coaxes Hermann’s lips into a kiss and slides his hand down to Hermann’s crotch.

Retrospectively, he should have felt it. He should have realized the absence of Hermann’s erection, but being focused on his own pleasure is not foreign to Newt.

“Did you not,” Newt begins, pulling away with a smack. “Did you not, uh, find me hot or whatever, did you not, like, I know you did, ‘cause your brain is in my brain and everything and my synapses and your synapses are basically synapsing it up with each other, but you’re not, you don’t-”

“Do shut up, Newton,” Hermann grinds out, and the half-formed old man joke that was knocking at Newt’s lips dies out. “You must know, you _should_ know that in my condition it’s not uncommon, with no physical stimulation I will not get hard, but I must say,” and Hermann stops and licks his lips there, his ears red and hot all the way to the tip of Newt’s own ears, “I must say that was quite an… Intriguing display.”

“Intriguing, inschmiguing, you can tell me I’m a filthy little shit and stuff your weird spider hands down my pants but you can’t tell me you dig me, you can Skype it into my brain but you won’t tell me all the dirty crap you know I wanna hear, come on,” Newt teases, and it’s good, it’s easy, no worrying, none of that.

Against him and into his head Hermann huffs out a little shock of laughter, swaying a little on his feet like he’s drunk. A sharp bolt of pain strikes down Newt’s spine to his legs. His hands shoot up of their own accord and come to sit on Hermann’s hips.

“I know the difference between what you believe you want to hear, or more accurately what your _cunt_ , as you so eloquently put it, wants to hear, and what you truly long to hear, my darling boy,” Hermann says on one breath, and Newt’s whole being sags against him.

“Dude,” he says. “ _Dude_.”

“I felt, the same way you are, I believe, feeling your own hands upon my hips right now, every jot and jolt of pleasure you have felt. Furthermore, I felt as acutely as if it had been my own the demanding desires of your brain, the ones hidden and hiding and those you have fabricated yourself and put at the foreground. I have felt what you long to want, and what you desire,” Hermann finished, with not a breath of air between them but no contact, either.

“Herm,” Newt says, petrified for the first time with the full realisation that Hermann could see even what he has hidden away from himself, and he waits, waits for Hermann to either leave or make him leave. This is the man who could not stand to have him ten feet away on the other side of a tape-parted lab and he’s now looking at Newt like he’s about to break. Not that he hadn’t always, but before he had looked ready to sweep off the broken little pieces of Newt and throw them in the garbage where they rightfully belonged. Now it feels like he would kneel down and glue him back together piece by piece. And he would, Newt knows he would, knows now he would have since the beginning, because if Hermann can see the things he was hiding, it means he can see everything Hermann was hiding, too.

“I think”, Hermann begins, with a thoughtful, tender little tickle of his nose against Newt’s, the most innocent gesture that makes Newt’s heart melt to his stomach, “I think I would rather like to go to bed, now.”

While Newt’s brain cooks up the most debased scenarios, going to bed actually means going to bed. In Hermann’s bed, nonetheless, even if at this point even Newt’s overly-dramatic and anxious brain didn’t expect to be kicked back out to his own quarters.

The blurry picture of Hermann in his pristine pajamas with his hair mussed up and his eye still smeared red could be laughable. But as soon as he sinks into the mattress, his whole body melts with exhaustion, and a sudden wave of it washes over Newt. It almost feels wrong to lie alongside Hermann in his dirty boxers, dirty undershirt, and dirty socks, but Hermann makes no protest, simply scoots closer to the wall without a word and shifts against Newt’s body in the most animal, reflexive way as soon as Newt lies down.

Once his body relaxes Newt finds himself distracted by the influx of pain swimming in and out of him from Hermann’s body, a constant stream of aches tugging at his nerves. Next to him, Hermann makes no sound and no movement, simply closes his eyes with a sigh, curled around him like a sleeping child. Newt looks at him and studies the deep lines of his face until he realises they will never relax, and turns off the light.

In the dark it’s harder to differentiate what is his and what is Hermann’s — whose elbow is too cold? Whose hair is falling on whose forehead in an annoying little tickle? Whose knees are shifting to find a comfortable position? It reminds Newt of bad dissociation episodes, of laying in the proverbial and literal dark and not knowing where his body began or ended and what it looked like, of feeling too strongly the push of gravity and of laying on the ground waiting to sink through the floor like in a calm body of water.

  
Newt falls asleep wondering whose body is swimming up towards the light.


	2. Chapter 2

When he was a child, Newt had learned, after running to his father in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, that dreams are created by the human brain to assimilate what remnants of the day it had not registered as a way to make sense of them and file them. As it turns out, hot-wiring your brain to someone else’s to then connect it to the brain of a dead hive-minded alien with the rustiest junk possible is the perfect way to unleash in your mind a fuckload of information for your already dysfunctioning brain to file away.

 

In the scant few hours of sleep Newt’s body allows him to take, he dreams of pain and water, of slow curling tendrils shifting against slow curling fingers, of blades slicing at his skin and of bleeding blue, even at eight years old on an operation table. He dreams of his body in Hermann’s eyes, strong and powerful; of Hermann’s body in Hermann’s own eyes, slow and gaunt. He dreams of his body moving against Hermann’s body, some unknown, approximative projection of it akin to early travellers maps. He awakes finally, laboriously, to lungs that will not be gills and hands that have no claws and too few eyes that see next to nothing in the darkness.

 

There are still moving images in some overcrowded corners of his head, those lingering from dreaming and those seeping from Hermann’s brain. Some are the same as his and some are not, but still undeniably his, from the needful things he thought up helplessly over years of watching Hermann (and Hermann’s body in Newt’s own eyes, slender and nimble) to long-forgotten memories of catching small bugs in his hands or reading books from the advanced biology section on the turtle-shaped cushion in the children’s corner of the library.

 

Newt, who has never done well with being in the same room as anyone without having their attention, turns the tiny reading light on and puts on his cracked glasses after giving the lenses a quick swipe with a corner of his undershirt. As hard as he tries, he can only wait a few minutes before shaking Hermann awake. He regrets it as soon as Biantal bursts into Hermann’s quiet dream of Newt defending his first thesis, and Newt slides in as close as he can into Hermann’s space when he opens bleary, disoriented eyes.

 

“Your hair,” Hermann says at first, burrowing into his pillow and closing his eyes again when he has regained sense of his surrounding.

 

“What about it?” Newt answers in the calmest voice he can muster, leaning on his elbow and raising his other hand to play with the fine fuzz behind Hermann’s ear, solely to feel the tickle of it at his own skull.

 

“Your first doctorate. Your _viva voce_ , more precisely.”

 

Hermann’s brain supplies a vivid image of Newt at sixteen with a shock of hot pink hair and an oversized Vorkriegsjugend tee shirt, and Newt laughs fondly, warmth spreading to his toes.

 

“My advisor said it had been a thesis offence afterwards. Did you ever read it?”

 

“I did. Of course I did, Newton. It was hopelessly jejune and lacked any sort of structure. It was also brilliant, and probably one of the least inane things you had done while you were in college.”

 

“Yeah, I can think of some of the dumb shit I’ve done, like, maybe one or two things, or- if you want me to cite just one, do you want me to, I can remind you-” Newt says, and he brushes his socked toes against Hermann’s ankle and conjures a fuzzy, hazy memory, of being barely twenty-four and still not knowing any better and sleeping with Hermann’s crumpled letters under his pillow. Of one night, barely a year into their correspondence and after letters had mutated into kraft envelopes stuffed to the brim, when Newt was elbow-deep into kaiju research and teaching and his fourth or fifth PhD; when he had enough testosterone and Adderall and adrenaline and energy drinks in his body to not care about anything.

 

That night, after reading Hermann’s latest letter and not sleeping for a good forty-eight hours, he had jerked himself off with his head mashed against his desk into Hermann’s scrawly, cramped handwriting without even taking his clothes off; before taking off his pants and his underwear only to stuff his boxers into the nearest envelope. Newt had scribbled a few words on the back of an overdue credit card bill before heading out in his pajama pants to post the letter, had gone home, face-planted into bed, and promptly forgotten about the whole affair until a few days after. He and Hermann had never talked about it. To this day, he still doesn’t remember what the letter said.

 

“I surely did not need you to remind me of this,” Hermann says in a low, clipped voice, his eyes at half-mast and planted firmly into Newt’s. “The note said nothing of importance, if you really cannot remember your own stupidity and vulgarity, a few instructions of sorts, if I were to hazard a guess at what the obscenities you scratched on the verso of this very embarrassing missive from Capital One-”

 

“Did you beat off to it?” Newt interrupts with a grin. “Dude, you remember it was a Capital One bill, you totally beat off to it, didn’t you, did you like, go all sitcom creeper on it and smell my panties while you jacked off?”

 

“Once,” Hermann admits after a moment of silence, shifting on his back and giving Newt a sideways, considering look before closing his eyes. “If you must know, it was the first time, and absolutely the only time, during those three years of correspondence, that I masturbated while thinking of you.”

 

Newt thinks of saying something funny, or gross, or both. He thinks of jokingly listing all the times he had read Hermann’s letters with a hand down his pants, of making fun of Hermann for saving himself. Instead he studies the elegant curve of Hermann’s nose and the way his eyelashes cast dramatic shadows on his cheeks in the low light, leans in, and kisses him.

 

It is so easy beneath the warm blankets for Newt to just lose himself in the kiss, in the slick heat of Hermann’s sleepy mouth, with tiredness — both his and Hermann’s — clouding his mind and making every move laborious. He feels his own lips against Hermann’s through the web woven between their brains, and when he splays his fingers over Hermann’s chest Newt feels the warmth of his own hand over his torso.

 

Newt is almost startled when Hermann raises a hand to stroke gently, slowly down his forearm. The skin at his arm and his fingertips tingles and when Hermann stops before resuming a few seconds later he realises Hermann has felt the scars carefully hidden beneath the ink, beneath the ridges and bumps of his tattoos, hidden to the eye but not the touch. Distantly Hermann’s brain supplies the image of topographic maps made of hard plastic to show the raised relief of unexplored territories, and Newt laughs against Hermann’s brain and lips and casually, easily, slides his hand lower.

 

Hermann lets out the sweetest, smallest little gasp when Newt brushes against his ribs, then again when the tip of his finger catches his navel. The sensations echo against Newt’s skin, the tiniest butterflies flapping their wings into his stomach, and he shakes in tandem with Hermann when he brushes his fingers over his protruding hipbones.

 

When finally, _finally_ , Newt curves his palm over Hermann’s cock, they both let out the same small whine, and pull away to stare at each other. Hermann keeps blinking owlishly and Newt feels the pull of sleep tug gently at his mind.

 

“Well, get on with it,” Hermann says in the most fussy voice Newt has ever heard from anyone about to get their dick touched, so Newt does.

 

Hermann isn’t hard yet, but his cock twitches in Newt’s fist as soon as it closes around it, and the tiniest jolt of pleasure zings low in Newt’s belly. It’s small, smaller than Newt had expected, even though had he been pressed for a description he wouldn’t quite have been able to put words on what he was picturing. Even as it grows in his hand as he moves it carefully, the head just goes past his closed fingers, easily placed there for Newt to swipe his thumb over the slit.

 

“I’m afraid that’s it,” Hermann says tightly, aware of Newt’s internal observations, his hips jerking as Newt squeezes just a touch harder and rubs at the loose skin near the head.

 

“Yeah, it’s awesome,” Newt breathes out in reply, tickling the tip of Hermann’s nose with his, “I can totally handle that, you fit in my hand, how cool is that shit? Take off your pants — I can’t see…”

 

Hermann huffs and grumbles and his annoyance is the most pleasing twitch in Newt’s brain, but he tugs his pants down anyway. Underneath are inches of soft, downy skin the color of curdled milk, and Hermann’s little dick, hard and red and so delicate-looking between Newt’s rough fingers. Saliva gathers in Newt’s mouth, and what was so far a gentle pulsing between his legs turns into something urgent and needy.

 

Instinctively Newt knows what Hermann likes, how tight he has to make his fist and how much he can play with his balls, that suckling on his bottom lip will make him helplessly buck his hips and gasp into Newt’s mouth. He knows Hermann loves the tender kisses he leaves all over his face, from his scrunched eyelids to the tip of his chin when he throws his head back to let the milky skin of his neck beg for kisses there, too. He knows rubbing his thumb right over the slit while pumping his fist increases the building pressure behind Hermann’s balls. He knows this because he feels it.

 

Newt feels acutely every press and squeeze of his fingers over Hermann’s cock, feels a pulse where he has none, a dick where he has none, has never had one, has never wanted nor needed one. _Phantom limbs_ , his mind supplies, and a jerk of Newt’s wrist makes the smallest, cutest drop of precome dribble down from Hermann’s cock. His cunt is aching between his legs, wet and desperately empty, and his head spins with the echo of Hermann’s own pleasure and the idea of feeling it if Hermann fucks him-

 

“Can I ride you?” Newt blurts out, dropping Hermann’s dick and kissing Hermann’s cheek apologetically when he makes a small displeased sound in the back of his throat. “Please say yes, come on, I’m gonna make you feel so good, I swear.”

 

“This was working for me,” Hermann grumbles, but he tugs at Newt’s boxers sleepily, scooting further from the wall when Newt slips them off and climbs over him unceremoniously.

 

Newt grins and leans down to kiss him, taking off his undershirt and throwing it somewhere in the room. He fumbles with his socks for a second, abandons the idea when it’s proving too difficult and when there are better things to be done, and rubs his cunt gently over Hermann’s cock before taking it in hand and guiding it inside himself.

 

As soon as Hermann is inside Newt keens — he feels his own tightness and wetness around the cock he doesn’t have as certainly as he feels Hermann’s dick inside of him, filling up a space inside him the way his brain fills the non-existent empty slots in his head. It has none of the aching fullness Newt had felt when people with bigger cocks would fuck him — there is no clearance, but Hermann fits inside him as if he had been made with this purpose.

 

“You feel so,” Hermann starts, eyes dark and tired and lost and his mouth open, shaping words before his brain does. “It feels…”

 

Newt knows how it feels — tight and wet and hot and good, too much already and not nearly enough. His body feels too hot where Hermann’s hands touch him, spidery hands not used to contact. Newt’s skin feels feverish under them, like huddling close to a fire after hours in the cold, after having lost sense of what warmth means. It feels, at the tips of Newt’s fingers where Hermann’s touch is mirrored, as though the nerves have atrophied, similar to the greatest atrophy of Hermann’s heart.

 

It’s all so distracting, the low-burning fire between his legs and the grip around the dick he doesn’t have, the palms of Hermann’s dry hands mapping his hips, his back, his belly. Newt can only grind minutely on his cock, twisting his hips in the sweetest little waves like he’s dipping his toes into water. His glasses keep slipping down his nose and he debates taking them off all of two seconds before deciding he cannot stop watching Hermann, the trembling of his lips, the fluttering of his lashes, the bright pink spots rising on his skin. He groans as he bends down and kisses Hermann, wet and with too much tongue, speeding up the careful motions of his hips and smiling foolishly into Hermann’s distracted kisses when he gasps against Newt’s lips.

 

After a few seconds of the most careful, gentle riding Newt has ever done all the pleasure starts to spread — ripples of it licking up to his chest and choking up his throat until all he could let out were the most strangled, wanton little moans he could ever remember himself producing. He buries his face into Hermann’s neck and wishes he could see the surely obscene picture of Hermann’s cock entering him, the sticky pinkness of it against his wet, engorged folds, or the way his ass probably spills over Hermann’s skinny thighs. He tries to picture it and some garbled mess of a moan rises from Hermann. Newt laughs.

 

In form of the weirdest payback in history, a memory-fantasy that isn’t his slinks over Newt’s brain, Hermann making him sit on his cock and shushing every single moan and sigh, holding Newt’s crossed wrists in one of his hands and stroking up and down his straining, milky un-inked thighs with the other. Newt’s hips stutter, and he rises up on his arms to look at Hermann properly.

 

“You didn’t know,” he says, and Hermann’s eyes shift between his face and his thigh (stop at his cunt, linger there for a few seconds, oh, Herm).

 

“I didn’t. There were many things I did not know about you.”

 

Hermann’s voice is flat and his mind suspiciously blank, so Newt reaches into his brain the best he can — sends out a searching hand blindly for the shameful secrets Hermann has dusted under the proverbial carpet.

 

Atop Hermann’s body Newt breathes and shakes, and sitting on Newt’s cock Hermann moans and twists, the hands on his hips stronger and bigger than they actually are, Newt’s hands, and Hermann’s hands draw careful little circles on his skin or curl around the shape of Newt’s dick, and somewhere in between Hermann lays in bed with his sheets twisted around his legs and two pillows under his thigh and comes helplessly over his own fist.

 

“Oh,” Newt says, picking up the rhythm again, riding in short, slow moves. “You didn’t know, either.”

 

“Mmh,” is all Hermann answers, his hips jerking up a few times before he abandons the idea and lets Newt move on his own. Little sparks of pain erupt in Newt’s lower back. “I assumed, I presumed, I thought-”

 

“You thought I was cis,” Newt answers with the smallest change of angle, “It’s cool. A lot of people do.”

 

“I shouldn’t have — I should have-”

 

“You shouldn’t have, you did, it was like ten years ago, it’s over, it’s done. Now you fuck me.”

 

Blessedly, Hermann does. His shame burns brightly low in Newt’s belly, mixing and twisting around the waves of his own arousal. Grinding thoughtfully for a bit, Newt leans down and kisses him at the best of his ability, short and wet smacks against his gasping mouth. One of Hermann’s hands crawls up his arm to his arm to bury his fingers there, pulling and pushing Newt closer. Newt laughs and his own thoughts surprise him when they trickle over Hermann’s brain, freely, sinuously sliding from the chaos of his own to Hermann’s.

 

They paint the fuzzy, early image of Newt with his head buried in Hermann’s lap and his cock in his mouth, thought up one late night at MIT while Newt was writing his fifth-or-sixth thesis and leaned his cheek on the desk to masturbate helplessly while drooling all over his notes. Hermann moans against him and his hips twitch up with a sharp blossom of pain and pleasure. Newt spreads his thighs wider, groaning when the movement drives Hermann’s cock deeper into him. He rocks carefully, slowly, listening to every change in Hermann’s loud, laboured breathing. Hermann is quiet — quieter than Newt thought he would be when he never stops muttering to himself in the lab, when it is so easy for him to get loud when Newt gets him angry and riled up. It’s so strange to suddenly be silent when all they did for years was argue.

 

"Dude, talk to me," Newt grinds out around a moan when he finds exactly the right position and starts moving quicker, with more purpose, fucking himself on Hermann’s cock just how he likes it.

 

"I do not — what?" Hermann blinks hazily, exhaustion and arousal making him slow and lazy.

 

"Just — just talk to me, okay, you’re being all quiet, it’s weird, whatcha thinking about?"

 

"Newton, you are in my head, for God’s sake," Hermann fires back as his ears redden in the cutest way and Newt leans down to kiss him again, sloppy and breathless, just because he has to.

 

"But your thoughts, our thoughts, whatever," he straightens up again, rides deep and fast for a moment before continuing, "it’s not linear, it’s not some kind of really fucked up audiobook, and I don’t — it’s like, half the game is knowing what you think is important, what you filter, so tell me, Doctor, whatcha thinking of?"

 

For a moment Newt thinks Hermann won’t understand, from the way he turns his head to the side and closes his eyes, mouth half-open and brows furrowed, partly lost in pleasure Newt can still feel at the tip of the cock he doesn’t have, urgent behind the tight and swollen balls that are not his.

 

"I am thinking," Hermann begins, laboriously, "I am thinking that you probably want me to say the same degrading things that float in your head when you think of me, let’s see, with my fingers, my fist even, in your insatiable holes. The same rubbish you toss off to late at night, when you only have your own fingers to satisfy this hungriness in you. Tell me, please do tell me, do you get this wet on your own, Doctor Geiszler?"

 

Newt neglects to provide an answer, though he doubts Hermann really was expecting one. His riding has become sloppy, and Hermann is right, he can feel his cunt drenched around Hermann’s cock, the wetness of him slicking Hermann’s crotch and thighs along with Newt’s own. He sneaks a hand between his legs, but as soon as he touches his clit it’s too much and he snatches his hand away, squeezing tight around Hermann’s dick and moaning as the sudden increase in sensations. Just as it feels like there is no room for Hermann’s brain in his head, it feels like there are no places left to be touched on his oversensitive body, no nerves left to stimulate; as though the simplest, barest touch would send him into overdrive.

 

"You feel heavenly," Hermann murmurs, suddenly, and Newt stares down at him, at his sillily big ears, still bright red and hot, the warmth of them radiating from Newt’s, too. "The way you take me, Newton, the way my prick fits in you, it’s sumptuous."

 

Leave it to Hermann to say the nicest things not minutes after uttering the most humiliating of them, and to make Newt feel shy and embarrassed even when he’s been riding his dick for the past ten minutes.

 

"Shut up, you dumbass," Newt says, and he dips down again to kiss Hermann, making small sounds in the back of his throat when Hermann’s hands cup his face.

 

"How do I make you come like this?" he asks, with big, stupidly earnest eyes planted in Newt’s own, and Newt’s hips stutter once, twice, and he starts to come.

 

Past partners had told him his orgasms were embarrassing with sometimes a small amount of jealousy in their voices, but Hermann just watches him with his hands still framing his face and his lips barely open like he’s witnessing something important, something special, and not just Newt finally giving in to the low-burning fire in his belly. Even without touching it, he feels his clit swell up, pulsing between his legs as he twitches around Hermann’s cock, can feel it in the way Hermann’s body tenses up with the sensation. It’s overwhelming to feel himself come around Hermann’s desperately hard cock, to feel himself shake and jerk and gush around an erection he doesn’t have. So overwhelming, in fact, that it only comes to him as an afterthought that Hermann must be feeling as well the way his cunt spasms and how pleasure zings madly through his body.

 

"Indeed," Hermann says, and Newt moans brokenly when he feels Hermann’s cock pulse at the same time as hot come starts to fill him up, the release mixing with his own aftershocks and leaving him trembling, shaking atop of Hermann as he grinds feebly into Newt’s cunt and comes almost silently, his mouth open but unmoving under Newt’s.

 

When Hermann’s body, tense with his orgasm, starts to relax under him, Newt lifts his hips up and groans feebly as Hermann’s cock slips out of his cunt. Hermann makes a little displeased sound in the back of his throat and buries a shaky hand in Newt’s hair, pushing his lips to his and kissing him slowly, lazily. This is not foreplay, this is afterplay, Hermann’s mouth catching every ragged breath from his lips and muffling every small moan squeezed out of his body by the lingering aftershocks. Everything is so quiet like this — the air in the room is heavy and smells of sweat and sex, and Newt’s world is limited to the gentle cradle of Hermann’s arms. His own brain is still fuzzy and lazy from coming, and so is Hermann’s.

 

"Dude, you’re falling asleep," Newt mumbles with the tiniest tickle of his tongue at the corner of Hermann’s lips.

 

"Surprising, given how restful the past week has been," Hermann replies drily, eyes closed and relaxed. "Get off me, you dolt."

 

"You gotta stop doing this thing where you’re all nice and sweet one second and then pretend you hate my guts," Newt says as he situates himself next to Hermann, "I know you’re a big softie, you can stop pulling my pigtails."

 

"Oh, sweet thing, assuming I pretend," he murmurs back, and Newt elbows him in the ribs.

 

He turns his back to Hermann and sets his dirty glasses down on the floor next to the bed and nuzzles the pillow contemplatively for a moment, stuck between the ever-there whirring of his own brain and the quiet blankness of Hermann’s, the endorphins soothing the still-turning gears in his tired mind. It’s silent for a bit, until Newt hears the rustle of sheets behind him, then finds himself with a precise half of the blanket thrown over him along with Hermann’s arm. His lips sigh a kiss at the nape of Newt’s neck, and Newt lets himself melt a bit in Hermann’s embrace before falling asleep.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

This time he dreams of his lungs on cold metal, of his skin burst open and his blood like oil slick on a parking lot, of smoke around him. Newt tries to look for Hermann, but everything looks so small he cannot find him, and when he blindly searches for him inside his head it’s messy again, an impossible labyrinth with no thread trailing behind himself to keep him from getting lost. There’s a rustle behind him, before him, of no distinguishable origin, somewhere-

 

Somewhere _behind_ him Hermann is untangling himself from the mess of sheets and blankets they are nestled in.

 

"Go back to sleep," he says in a hoarse voice without even looking at Newt. "I am just going to the loo, and to fetch something to eat."

 

"Don’t go," Newt mumbles into the pillow, which ends up sounding more like _d’go_. Hermann lays a hand on his head for a moment and leaves anyway, so Newt rolls over and burrows himself into Hermann’s side of the bed.

 

The next time he wakes up, Hermann is back at his side, sitting at the foot of the bed with his legs stretched out in front of him and his back to the wall. He’s still in his pajamas, primly eating raisins and dried longan fruit and a packet of the tasteless wheat thins usually found in the mess hall. When Newt raises slowly, Hermann’s eyes turn to him wordlessly, and he stares at him while he methodically chews.

 

"I need to pee," Newt says in lieu of a greeting, and he shuffles to the bathroom awkwardly.

 

The tiny bathroom is chilly and bare, Hermann’s toothbrush and straight razor sitting at the edge of the sink. There’s regulation soap in the shower, and no rug between the cold floor and Newt’s socked feet. He does his business quickly, washes his hands solely because Hermann will _know_ if he doesn’t, and pads back into the room. Hermann is still sitting in the same place, now drinking from a battered plastic bottle, and the cool liquid at his lips makes Newt realise how thirsty he is.

 

Hermann hands him the bottle wordlessly, then a small handful of raisins once he’s swallowed a few gulps of the plastic-tasting water. Newt wrinkles his nose but eats them anyway, still naked, and by the sound Hermann makes when he rests his head on his shoulder, still smelly.

 

"You — we ought to take a shower," he says, "I must smell-"

 

"You smell awesome, sweat and spunk and sick and all. Super punk."

 

Hermann groans and Newt laughs at him, lifting and turning his head to bury his nose in Hermann’s hair. It smells of rain and smoke and chalk and cigarettes, and the scent is so familiar Newt gets lost in it for a moment. He makes a small choked sound of surprise when Hermann turns his head to kiss him, gently, and for a moment Newt wants to push him back against the bed and have his way with him, again.

 

"No," Hermann says as soon as the thought formulates itself in Newt’s head, pulling away with a soft smacking sound. "Shower. _Now_."

 

So they do — back to back and awkwardly, and Hermann’s voice objects to Newt’s passing thought of soaping up Hermann’s legs and knees and toes for him — and maybe teasing his cock a little — with a firm No, so Newt very pointedly thinks of Hermann’s load in his cunt as he washes it out, just to have Hermann smack the back of his thigh wetly from where he’s sitting on his little plastic chair, and he laughs and laughs and stands very still while Hermann audibly stares at the tattoos inked on his back.

 

"It feels as though they could get washed away any second," Hermann explains as Newt rinses the suds away.

 

"Sometimes it feels like they should," Newt mumbles back before he can think any better of it, and he gets under the spray of water face first like it could wash the words from his mouth.

 

He hurries out of the shower with soap suds still clinging to his skin and pointedly ignores Hermann’s thoughts in his head and instead focuses on the strange sensation of water still rushing over his skin as he towels himself off. Newt stares at himself in the mirror, at the misshapen ink-covered scars on his torso, barely visible under Ceramander’s angry face. The water has washed away the blood that still lingered on his face and his hair after his Hermann-mandated visit to medical, but he can still see the fresh cuts and bruises at the surface of his skin, and feel the invisible ones deep inside his head.

 

 _Why worry about them_ , a snide voice whispers inside his brain (not Hermann’s voice, never his voice, for all the things they have thrown to each other, never his voice — just like the insidious murmurs that insist that Hermann is a useless cripple aren’t spoken in Newt’s) _it’s not like your brain is some untouched, virginal place_ , it remarks slyly.

 

"Newton," Hermann starts in a low, careful voice, limping out of the shower.

 

"I don’t wanna talk about this shit," Newt says. He goes to throw his towel in a corner, thinks Hermann will probably pick it up, and hangs it on a hook nearby.

 

Newt kicks half-heartedly at his pants and shirt still laying on Hermann’s floor and stares at his undershirt (half-hidden behind a pillow) and underwear (sticking out from under the bed). His socks are lost somewhere in the bathroom, so he flops on the bed naked and buries his head under a pillow.

 

Of course, when Hermann comes out, he’s dressed in the slacks and shirt he’d carried with him into the bathroom. He’s also wearing slippers, and Newt snorts before hiding his face again. He hears some rustling of paper and cloth, then the cracking sound of a match and the soft hiss of paper catching fire. The acrid smell of cigarette smoke reaches his nose next, and he peeks out from under his pillow and squints to watch Hermann, sitting at his desk chair with a cigarette held to his mouth, inhaling deeply with his eyes closed.

 

"Not a word," Hermann breathes out around a curl of smoke. Newt snickers at the way his body visibly relaxes, how he sucks in his cheeks lightly whenever he takes a drag, the dainty little snap of his thumbnail against the filter when he taps the ashes out in a dirty teacup.

 

"Didn’t say a thing," Newt finally peeps, sending out a searching hand for his glasses and sticking them on before rolling over on his back.

 

"Your thoughts are quite loud."

 

 _They don’t need to be loud, I’m in your brain_ , Newt thinks, and the little cloud of smoke Hermann huffs out in lieu of an actual laugh delights him.

 

"Come back here?" he asks, and Hermann rolls his eyes but complies. He sits primly at the end of the bed, teacup at his knee and cigarette at his lips, watching Newt shrewdly. Slowly, watching him with half-lidded eyes, Newt pokes at his hip with a careful toe before dragging his foot down Hermann’s thigh. Hermann’s hands snatch up the cup-turned-ashtray and set it down on a nearby shelf. He crushes his cigarette inside before turning fully towards Newt. "Your head’s not just lines of binary code."

 

"Binary code _means_ something. My head could fully be filled with lines of binary code."

 

"I’m trying to seduce you, dude, shut up."

 

"With binary code?"

 

"That could work, you know that could totally work on you, but my point was, my point is, your big math brain isn’t just filled with math, you act like I have all these dirty gross fantasies but your brain’s really not rated PG, like, far from it," Newt pauses then, setting his foot against the inside of Hermann’s thigh, "I know the shit you get off to, from, from sticking your dick between some tits or between some, my, my asscheeks-"

 

"You are terrible at this," Hermann interrupts him, wrapping the long fingers of his left hand around Newt’s ankle and using the index finger of his right hand to trace the lines of Mutavore where it has been inked over the top of Newt’s right foot.

 

"Okay, okay, do you want me to remind you of the times you fingered your ass thinking of me, fucking you with my cock, like, before you knew, those first few weeks we actually worked together, and then, then it was with some toy, do you really want me to fuck you this badly?" Hermann’s ears are red at the tips now, the blush so hard Newt feels the heat of it at his own ears, and he laughs and pushes his foot firmly against Hermann’s crotch, feels his grip loosen on Newt’s ankle but get stronger just a breath later. "You’ve wanted to fuck me, too, in the ass, but let me tell you this one’s gonna stay in your head, it’s just not worth the hassle, you’re not the one who’s gonna be shitting out lube and spunk for hours afterwards."

 

" _Newton_ -"

 

"Sorry, I’m sorry, okay, I’m crap at this." Newt breathes out, slowly moving his foot up and down the shape of Hermann’s cock through the fabric. "Open your fly."

 

Hermann does. His dick is just a bit stiff when he pulls it out, small and pink in his hand, and Newt lets his foot curl against it, moaning dazedly and bringing his other leg in to grasp Hermann’s cock between his feet at the best of his ability.

 

"You’ve thought about this," he says in a distracted voice as Hermann’s dick hardens. "The day some stuff splattered on my boots and I took them off in the lab, you told me I was an idiot and all that bull but that night you jerked off to my feet, I saw it."

 

"Who on Earth gets a tattoo on their foot?" Hermann grumbles, but his fingers jerk and curl around Newt’s feet, guiding them over his cock.

 

"Shut up," Newt says again. Hermann is getting harder under the sensitive skin of his soles, stiffening as Newt shifts to carefully brush his toes over the head. It’s easier to really move now, and he spreads his legs to press the full flat of his feet against the warm skin of Hermann’s dick. He snorts when Hermann’s eyes flicker to his cunt, and sneaks a hand between his thighs to finger his clit gently, half for show, and half because Hermann’s arousal has slithered over the proverbial shared web of nerves between them, brain impulse by brain impulse.

 

Hermann’s hands move quickly over his feet, guiding them and pressing them tighter around his cock, long fingers stroking over the skin like spiders in dismay. Newt’s fingers move in tandem over his cunt, dipping low to feel the wetness at his hole then dragging back up to his swollen clit. It pulses under the pads of his fingers and Newt digs his fingernails in the engorged flesh, croaking out a little moan as Hermann gasps and shudders.

 

"Sorry, sorry, I — how’s it feel?" Newt babbles, pressing his feet tighter around Hermann’s cock, "Can you feel how wet you’ve made me?"

 

" _Yes_ ," Hermann grits out, hips twitching up to fuck his cock between Newt’s soles, smearing slick precome over the skin. "If I couldn’t, even if I couldn’t feel it I would smell it, you smell so-"

 

He cuts himself off then and closes his eyes, hands pressing over Newt’s feet, and what was so far a slow mess of sensations Newt could simply sink into turns into another dark, velvety corner of Hermann’s mind, his mouth at Newt’s ankle, at his toes, the luscious drag of his lips up Newt’s calves and thighs (with freshly, hastily mind-added ink, Hammerjaw and Hardship stretched over skin Hermann’s mind previously thought bare; should Newt feel touched, is it strange that he does?) and the agonisingly slow and tender murmur of his lips and tongue up to Newt’s cunt, the wet fire of his mouth over the filthiest, most demanding part of Newt’s body next only to his brain.

 

As soon as the thought tumbles from Hermann’s brain to his, Newt keens, feet stuttering over Hermann’s cock and his own hips bucking to find something to rub against. When one of his feet goes to slip down and Hermann’s nails dig into his skin Newt moans feebly, focusing on the urgent feeling behind his — Hermann’s — balls.

 

"You can’t put that shit inside my head and expect me to just carry on, easy peasy. I could have you between my legs right now but _no_ , you’ve spent a couple years thinking about jerking it on my toes. So what? I’ve wanted to sit on your face to shut you up since day _one_."

 

Something not unlike a laugh rises from Hermann’s throat and the slow scratch of his nails down Newt’s ankle almost feels like a caress. The fat little head of his dick is slippery now, dribbling precome liberally and making Newt’s feet slick, all the easier for Hermann to slide between.

 

"Looks like I’m not the only one getting wet," Newt remarks, almost casually, twisting his ankle and arching his feet to squeeze just a bit tighter, clumsily trying to rub at Hermann’s tight balls with his heel. "Come on, do I need to kick you in the balls, would you like that, or, or, talk about your beautiful hard cock, I know cis dudes like the _big_ , beautiful, hard cock shit but not gonna lie, I’m literally not going to tell lies — would this work for you, do you need to be humiliated-"

 

"Please, do not apply your fetishes to all of us, Newton," Hermann says in a tight voice, and Newt laughs and starts his hand moving again. Arguing is familiar and easy, and the way it makes bright red splotches bloom on the milky skin of Hermann’s torso is marvellous. "Why can’t you be _quiet_ , when I do not even need to speak for you to know my thoughts?"

 

"Because," Newt starts, eyes at half-mast trained on Hermann’s fire-red ears and wet, drooling mouth, "because it’s easy, because I don’t have a map of your brain and I’m surprised the aisles aren’t labelled, because is it fine, is it okay to say that you just want me to come, you want me to love it and you’ll come, you’d come rubbing up against the sheets when you’d give Vanessa head, and when we fucked earlier you only came once I did, right after I did, you kept asking how I liked it, you want to make me come so bad it’s so _cute_."

 

It’s fine, more than fine, apparently, from the way Hermann makes a small, helpless little sound in the back of his throat before spilling over Newt’s tense feet. Amongst the onslaught of sensations from his orgasms, Newt finds in his head bright flickers of thoughts and memories like a rapidly-flashing film, previous named or unnamed flames coming around Hermann’s fingers or his dick, at his tongue or at his fist, gently and loudly and slowly and quickly; and amongst all of them Newt, strange in Hermann’s eyes, shaking blissfully and unashamed near and under Hermann’s skin.

 

Hermann curls up on himself, panting and blushing and sweating like he’s just ran a marathon. Newt is frozen, sprawled out with his soiled feet still in Hermann’s lap, his own chest heaving with the exertion from Hermann’s orgasm, the aftershocks of it running through his body and making him shiver.

 

"C’m’here," Newt croaks out, but Hermann doesn’t move. "Herm?"

 

" _Hush_."

 

There’s a short silence during which Newt stares at the ceiling, before he jerks despite himself when he feels Hermann’s tongue at his toes, laving at the sensitive skin and licking away his own spunk. Newt is surprised by the moan that spills from his lips, and he lets Hermann carry on silently, breathing heavily and laying very, very still.

 

"Is this," Hermann mumbles into his skin, "is this okay?"

 

Newt can’t say anything, so he just nods frantically. His tongue feels heavy in his mouth and if he focuses on it he thinks he can taste, faintly, Hermann’s come beneath the saltiness of his own skin. Once again he toys distractedly at his clit, absent-mindedly pinching it between his fingers as Hermann’s raspy tongue licks away the evidence of his orgasm. Newt is so worked up that even the small, careless strokes over his still-engorged cunt feel like they’re going to bring him close to coming in seconds.

 

He closes his eyes and thinks back to Hermann’s sneaky, mean fantasy from minutes earlier, thinks of the trail his mouth had, would have traced, of the slick heat of his tongue on the same path, like a reminder to Hermann that promises must be fulfilled.

 

"Why must you always be this way?" Hermann sighs, even as he crawls up between his legs and noses gently at his knee. "Always, _always_ , it has to be about you. I should have guessed it would have been the same in bed, when even saving the bloody world becomes about you, I should have guessed-"

 

"Sorry, I’m sorry this isn’t your perfect little brain-world, life’s tough like that," Newt replies, frustrated, spreading his thighs wider.

 

"But it isn’t yours either, Newton," Hermann says in a placid voice with a pensive kiss somewhere near Kaiceph. "You cannot defuse someone’s argument by telling them they can’t always have what they want just so _you_ can."

 

"This is the worst dirty talk ever," Newt grumbles, and he grabs Hermann’s hair as soon as it comes into his reach.

 

Then there are no more words — he breathes and Hermann breathes and somewhere in the tangled, knotted link between them, Hermann’s annoyance pulses in rhythm with the maddening thrum of Newt’s blood. Newt cries out, a great, gurgling start, when Hermann just leans into him and licks a broad stripe up his slit. He moans again feebly when Hermann’s cold fingers come up and spread him open, his thumb teasing and revealing his clit from where it’s peeking out from under its hood. Gentle sparks of victory tickle at the inside of his chest, not his, Hermann’s, and Newt tugs on his short hair as harshly as he can.

 

Stupidly, the bite of it at his own scalp surprises him, as much as Hermann’s quick pinch of his clit in retaliation. His hips buck up into Hermann’s face and he laughs in spite of himself, letting them twitch slowly into Hermann.

 

His mouth is so warm and wet, silky over the filthy, urgent parts of Newt’s body. Part of him wants to just lay supine on the bed and let Hermann work him over and the other part wants to hold onto his hair as tightly as possible and fuck his face for all it’s worth. Newt entertains the thought for a few guilty, delicious seconds before Hermann groans accusingly between his legs, and Newt scratches gently at his scalp in reassurance.

 

It’s so easy to let the slow, familiar waves of arousal lick up the inside of his stomach and to let the warmth of it spread, to feel it like a tickle to his heart and his brain, to let himself be nothing but nerves, pleased, aroused nerves, attached to Hermann’s pleasuring tongue and fingers; to let Hermann be the beginning and the end of sensations, to let him decide what Newt felt. Easier, much easier than the cries and whispers of the vapid, cruel beings so deeply settled inside of him — it’s so easy like this to make them quiet, silent, invisible.

 

Faintly Newt wonders — wonders what Hermann understands of him, what sense he has made out of the mess of Newt’s brain. And the thought might be just passing but Hermann catches it anyway and scratches at Newt’s thighs, his ass, his back, twists his long arms around the top of Newt’s thighs to keep him in place long enough to make him fall apart.

 

"Keep going," Newt wants to say, to beg, to order — but it comes out as a completely unrecognisable garbled mess of sounds, so he cards his fingers through Hermann’s hair nicely and properly and closes his eyes, (why were his eyes open?) closes his eyes and holds on tight.

 

Open, Hermann’s mouth shapes a curve perfectly suited to Newt’s cunt — there is no clearance, no skin left untouched, and his tongue rubs over his clit in the most perfect way. He works Newt slowly, determined, with the same steadfast application he does everything with, pulling back at regular intervals to suckle gently on Newt’s clit before diving back in with his nails digging in the soft flesh of Newt’s thighs.

 

He’s so intent and sweet that it feels impossible for Newt to come, his arousal climbing higher and higher until it’s simply impossible _not_ to come — so he does. The first wave of his orgasm is so small it’s almost an afterthought and it rises so gradually that Newt is startled to find himself keening and grasping at Hermann’s hair hard enough that it’s actively uncomfortable for him as well, the burning at his own scalp, out of breath and with his feet slipping over the sheets.

 

Newt is still panting when Hermann crawls up to him to kiss him, wet and filthy, tasting like Newt with his come smeared over his mouth and chin. Newt kisses back anyway, breathless and trembling and blessedly, happily light-headed. Hermann makes a little noise when Newt’s still-shaky hand blindly skims over his flat stomach to curl around his cock, and he bites Newt’s lip when Newt starts fisting his dick.

 

Because Hermann jump-cabled his brain to Newt’s via giant soulless monster, there’s a spark of worry over Hermann’s almost overwhelming arousal, and Newt, who has never done well with people worrying about him unless it was precisely what he wanted, kisses him with too much tongue and squeezes his cock just a tad too tight to shut him up. The lick of worry turns into a prickle of irritation, and Newt’s grip falters before he understands that for once, Hermann’s irritation isn’t (completely, at least) directed at him.

 

There are parts of Hermann’s body that Newt can map without feeling the reverberation of his own touch, the side of his knee and the length of his right thigh. When he touches Hermann’s hands sometimes the touch disappears and he knows it’s not the connection faltering — not with the way his legs tingle and ache, not with the tight, burning pressure around his torso, or the way Hermann’s head spins even lying down, like he’s losing his balance, taking Newt’s with it like a strangely turning cog.

 

"Don’t," Hermann says in a low, almost menacing voice as words take shape on Newt’s tongue, _I’m sorry_ and _It happens_ and _It’s fine_.

 

"Not a word," Newt pipes up in answer, and he kisses him again.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Hermann takes a minute to kiss him back — slowly and carefully, with something not quite like shame prickling at his skin and at Newt’s. He sighs sweetly when Newt takes his mouth off his to drag a trail of messy, loud kisses down his jaw and his neck, burrowing his face against Hermann’s smooth, dry skin and kissing almost absently while his brain whirs. He lets it go on autopilot and quickly divests Hermann of his wrinkled shirt and slacks and underwear before plastering himself to his body, letting their limbs tangle like the messy wires of their brains.

 

For once — scratch that, Newt would _like_ to say _for once_ , but he does it all the time, every time, in the lab when they fight and when the world is, was, ending, whether it be Newt’s world or The World, whatever — Newt lets the insidious things inside his brain do the talking and lets the sweetest, gentlest things he has ever thought about Hermann spill out and over.

 

From the need he’d had, years ago, to spread Hermann open on his own bed, when he was always so hunched over with his arms tight at his sides, to bury his face inside every crevice of Hermann’s gangly body and just breathe and taste his skin; to the longing he had felt to kiss Hermann after one of his after over-steeped brews, picturing his mouth wet and warm and bitter from teas and cigarettes. Newt lets the silliest, weirdest things go, slither over Hermann’s too-close brain as he lets his mouth and his tongue trace a wet path down Hermann’s bony collarbones.

 

"Newton," Hermann breathes, so low Newt cannot decipher the tone of his voice.

 

Slyly then the fleeting, curious desire to run his tongue over the smooth surface of Hermann’s painstakingly polished oxfords, the inquisitive wonder of whether his mouth would fit the shape of Hermann’s bony ankles. Inside Hermann’s sternum laughter bubbles up silently, just the tiniest tremor under Newt’s mouth, and he gives a soft, sucking kiss at the skin there just for that. Patiently Newt recalls watching Hermann work at the holoprojector, his long hands bathed in the blue glow moving swiftly and pointedly, and himself staring at those pale fingers and hoping for the shape of them at his cheeks, his jaw, his throat. Hermann’s shoulder shifts under Newt and his hand comes up to softly stroke Newt’s arms, a barely-there little caress like a reminder.

 

Suddenly, amidst the mess of Newt’s own thoughts and memories Hermann’s mind pipes up the image of Newt’s own arms, tattoos as sharp and vivid as they were on the day he got them, and as his fingers gently graze Yamarashi he points out the tiniest splatters of kaiju blue burns over Newt’s skin, like flour spilled on a counter or grain in old movies, small barely visible dents on the kaiju’s monstrous faces.

 

Newt doesn’t know if this is retaliation or a compliment, as he always had with Hermann, and in his head he points out the places on Hermann’s head where the hair is inexplicably shorter where Hermann has snipped away cowlicks and rebellious locks that would not stand flat against his skull. A swift, warm wave of embarrassment licks up Hermann’s neck and thus, Newt’s, and he laughs as quietly as he can into Hermann’s skin, which is not a lot.

 

After that it seems easier to just kiss the hell out of Hermann’s wiry body. Newt noses his way into Hermann’s armpit and nuzzles the tuft of wiry hair there, licking a short, quick stripe even as Hermann squirms beneath him. The irritation is back, but that makes it all the more simple, familiar, and Newt hums contentedly and squeezes Hermann’s cock again.

 

It’s still soft, even as Newt feels the want tight in Hermann’s — his — their — chest. Gently, he curves his palm over it, like he would fit his hand over his own pubic mound, and presses. Hermann makes a questioning little sound in the back of his throat and Newt kisses the side of his biceps, rubbing gently over Hermann’s dick, rolling the soft shape of it under the flat of his fingers, the way he would on himself. It’s dry and Newt would rather not put spit into the equation, but slowly, he can feel Hermann’s arousal travel down his chest, pooling at the pit of his stomach as he lets out a small gasp.

 

"It might take a while, like this," Hermann murmurs dryly, but he doesn’t ask Newt to stop or show any sign of discomfort — on the contrary he cants his hips up just the slightest bit.

 

"I’m in no hurry," Newt mumbles into his skin, and his mind completes in that sharp, mean voice that whispered to Newt ever since the world did not end, _because you want to hide from the same world you wanted to save for your very own benefit_.

 

The hated worry sparks hotly in Hermann’s chest and Newt curses himself, his brain, monsters, his monsters, and twists his wrist and bites softly at Hermann’s skin.

 

"Just let me do this, let me do this for you," Newt says, and he mouths his way down Hermann’s body, teasing at his nipples and nosing at his protruding ribs before kissing the head of his dick, then the soft swell of his balls.

 

Newt doesn’t know if he manages to tune it out or if Hermann tunes _him_ out, but after a while he can only feel Hermann’s arousal, a slow haze of heat in his chest and belly. He mouths at the wrinkly skin of Hermann’s cock and balls, distantly surprised at how much the skin moves under his tongue and the drag of his lips. God forbid Hermann Gottlieb should ever moan — he is only making soft, breathy sounds, and Newt has never really enjoyed silence, especially not when he could be hearing his own voice instead. He drags his lips up the flaccid, warm length of Hermann’s cock before pensively mouthing at the head for a moment.

 

"I know what you like," Newt says finally, his lips moving against the flesh of Hermann’s dick. It’s just the tiniest bit swollen now, but still soft.

 

"That’s fantastic, Newton," Hermann breathes, pink from the bottom of his chin to the middle of his torso, "why don’t you put that knowledge to good use?"

 

"Oh, nope, no, niet, non. That’s too easy, that’s way too easy, and I want you to feel really, really good."

 

"No, you don’t. You want my pleasure to be intrinsically linked to _you_ , so _you_ can feel good in turn."

 

"Whatever, dude, _you_ want to come on my face, you’ve wanted to come on your ex’s face," Newt starts, and he takes Hermann’s dick in his mouth for a moment. The flaccidness of it feels strange in his mouth, instead of the hardness of the previous dicks he’d sucked, or fantasized about sucking. He pulls off and moves down to Hermann’s balls, laving them with his tongue. "You want me to finger your ass while I suck you, you’ve _had_ women finger your ass while they sucked you," Newt adds with a gentle swipe of his middle finger over Hermann’s hole, just teasing.

 

"Good lord," Hermann grumbles, and he pulls his hands over his face. Next to the pale, pale skin of his hands, his red ears look vermillion.

 

"Hey, do you want me to eat your ass a bit?" Newt asks, stroking gently over the wrinkled skin, letting his other hand crawl up to cup Hermann’s cock and give it a small squeeze.

 

Hermann groans and his hands don’t leave his face, but after a few seconds he nods minutely, spreading his thighs open just a few inches wider. Newt grins to himself, leaning in and placing a small kiss on Hermann’s balls. He strokes the underside of Hermann’s thigh slowly before pushing it higher up, leaving Hermann exposed. So soon after a shower Hermann doesn’t smell like much — regulation unscented soap and a tad musky — but Newt dives in hungrily all the same.

 

"You are insufferable," Hermann says above him, his voice a little muffled, and Newt hums his agreement. He really wants to talk, get Hermann riled up, but he also really wants to do it in other ways, so he shuts up and sucks a loud kiss over Hermann’s hole instead.

 

It still feels so strange, even after all that has happened in the past hours (evening? Morning? What time is it? What _day_ is it?) to feel the tickle of his own tongue at his own ass, strange and perverse, and the heat burning his face probably isn’t all Hermann’s. Neither is the steady throbbing of his clit, where in the blurred spaces between their bodies there’s the pulse of Hermann’s arousal, slow but there, diffuse but certain.

 

After a while Newt’s tongue starts aching, and there’s a straining pain in his hips and the inside of his thighs that tell him that maybe this is not a very comfortable position for Hermann either. Slowly he pulls away, leaving a sloppy lick on Hermann’s wet, sensitive hole, and gently brings Hermann’s legs straight down on the bed, kissing apologetically at the sore muscles and joints of Hermann’s thighs.

 

"What else do you want?" Newt asks as he drags his lips over the jutting bones of Hermann’s hip, squeezing his cock in his hand.

 

"Surely you know what I want," Hermann groans, red all over and warm to the touch, his small, soft cock swollen over his balls. "You have been in my head, I reiterate, we have had this argument already."

 

"And I’m telling you again, I want you to tell me exactly where you want my mouth, my hands, my cunt, I know, I don’t need telling, I know you like — you like a little ball action, sucking on them, and you like it wet-" Newt demonstrates by gathering spit in his mouth and closing it over the head of Hermann’s dick, sliding his mouth down more than really sucking, slowly, gently. When he pulls off, Hermann’s cock is coated in saliva and Newt snickers to himself for a second before softly blowing on the sensitive, wet skin, revelling in Hermann’s full body twitch and accompanying gasp.

 

He plays nice for a moment — idly stroking the downy skin of Hermann’s thighs while he suckles on the head of his cock, dragging his tongue up and down the soft shaft, playing with Hermann’s balls with one hand and letting his fingertips stray over Hermann’s still-wet asshole to tease at the wrinkled skin. Newt is being so nice, ignoring the urgent pulse between his legs that he knows Hermann is aware of just as much as he is, but he can only be nice for so long.

 

"C’mon, tell me what you _really_ need right now, I’ll do it, I’d do anything to you," he moans, sounding more annoyed and whiny than seductive.

 

"That’s exactly what I’m worried about," Hermann scoffs above him, but his ears have reddened again and Newt is pretty sure the wave of fondness washing over his heart doesn’t come from himself.

 

"You have so little faith in me, dude, but like, enough to jerk off to sixty-nining me, like I’d actually have the selflessness to do that, well, now I’d be four-thousand-seven-hundred-sixty-one-ing, what with all the freaky sensation transmission, did you like that math, do you want me to talk math at you-"

 

"Bloody hell, shut your mouth!" Hermann barks out, cheeks positively red, slapping a hand on the top of Newt’s head to grasp a fistful of hair and tug. "You are insufferable," he grits out, even as his still-soft cock rests small and swollen a mere breath away from Newt’s lips.

 

Newt obeys, for once — drags his closed lips over the short length of Hermann’s dick and barely kisses the sensitive flesh. He pointedly ignores the urgency of the pulsing between his legs with the immodest nerve of an overpraised child, and buries his nose in the thick thatch of hair around Hermann’s navel. Deliberately, he breathes in the musky smells of Hermann’s sweat, his balls, his dick. Turning his head, Newt presses a kiss to the base of Hermann’s cock, pulling back just long enough to coax the flaccid penis into his mouth and suck, slow and wet, while Hermann breathes and swallows silently.

 

"Like this, yes," Hermann exhales at last, adjusting the position of his legs a little and threading his fingers through Newt’s hair more gently, rubbing his fingertips against his scalp. "Your fingers, please."

 

Everything is quiet, and when Newt moves his hand around to prod gently at Hermann’s asshole, it feels too loud, just the dry sound of skin on skin. He takes a few fussy seconds to wet his fingers with as much spit as he can before going back in, hesitantly pushing his middle finger inside. It feels too dry and tight but Hermann sighs nonetheless, his thighs spreading wider like his body is welcoming pleasure of its own accord.

 

Newt is careful — he was a teenager once and dry fingering pretty much sucks — but Hermann breathes and twitches and his cock even leaks a little bit of slick, bitter fluid into his mouth. He moans disapprovingly when Newt pulls out and groans his discontentment when Newt pulls away from his dick.

 

“I’m not — chill, dude, I’m just not gonna do this dry, do you have anything, even a lubed condom or whatever,” Newt rambles, and Hermann makes a low, screechy sort of sound before twisting an arm to reach between the thin mattress and the wall, throwing a small, wrinkly tube of Surgilube at Newt’s face seconds later. Newt smiles against the skin of Hermann’s thigh, opening the tube and lubing up with shaky fingers, and there’s a scowl building on Hermann’s face but only he only sighs contentedly when Newt slides his wet finger back inside and rubs it firmly against his prostate.

 

If Hermann certainly did seem to enjoy the soft blowjob of sorts, it’s nothing compared to how he reacts to fingering. His back arches, his mouth opens without letting any sound out, and what Newt guesses could be pleas and moans vibrate in his throat without ever coming out. He writhes silently, his body responding to every twitch and press of Newt’s fingers beautifully, like Newt is touching his very core.

 

Newt’s heart pounds and he doesn’t know if it’s in response to the desperate pulsing of Hermann’s blood both right at the tips of his fingers and in his own body, mirrored, reverberating like a thrumming bass in an echo chamber or because of his own arousal, more powerful and demanding than ever, a slippery descent in his very entrails. His mouth is agape, his breath caught in his throat, his clit desperately hard between his legs in all the ways Hermann’s cock isn’t.

 

His dick is really swollen now, the way a sore would be, warm and tender beneath Newt’s reverent lips. It’s leaking a steady stream of precome into Newt’s demanding mouth, mixing with the saliva that has gathered there with Newt’s arousal, his hunger. Newt’s head spins and he crooks his fingers and, it seems, positively jabs them into Hermann’s prostate.

 

And Hermann comes.

 

He comes and comes and comes and his whole body with it, tense as a bowstring with the smallest raspy moans being coaxed out of his mouth by pleasure and release. His thighs are straining to the point of pain and Newt keeps shifting restlessly against the sheets in response, his own body taut and sore, his insides melting. He can’t breathe, even as air burns in his throat and his lungs, even as Hermann desperately pants and heaves.

 

When Newt finally takes his fingers out, Hermann’s body drops on the bed like a puppet whose strings have been cut. Newt’s whole body aches. Even his scalp feels sore, and he all but throws himself inside Hermann’s arms, burrowing his face in his neck and finally breathing, in and out, in and out, rubbing his lips against Hermann’s clammy skin without kissing him and breathing, in and out, in and out, Hermann’s smell more than actual air, the stench of his sex-sweat, in and out, in.

 

"Hermann," Newt gasps out, throwing a leg over Hermann’s as he spreads his thighs, "Hermann."

 

Hermann, with his mind still cloudy with exertion and endorphins, says nothing, and clumsily guides the hand currently pinned under Newt to his cunt. He recoils for a fraction of a second when he feels how wet Newt is, how swollen the part of him is. Then Newt moans and sobs and thrashes and one long finger traces the curve of his cunt, from his perineum to his clit. Helplessly, no greed and all instinct, Newt wiggles his hips around to try and force Hermann’s fingers inside, push them to apply more pressure. He begs with his mind and with his mouth, letting the most incoherent babbling tumble out when Hermann doesn’t move.

 

" _Please_ , I can’t," he sobs and groans and his face is too sweaty to know if he is crying or not, the last thrums of Hermann’s orgasm beating in rhythm with the maddening throb of his demanding arousal. "Please get inside me, you forgot, make me forget, do me, I did you _so_ good, didn’t I, tell me I did, I-"

 

He cuts himself short and breathes (in and out, in and out), hiding his face in the nooks of Hermann’s body.

 

"Look at me," Hermann says, dry and breathless, and his finger moves, just a little, to slot itself between Newt’s labia.

 

So Newt does — painfully unplasters himself from Hermann’s body and blinks around to find his face, blank and red. His face says nothing and his mind says everything. Newt wants to hide again.

 

"You _did_ me, as you say, perfectly, Newton," Hermann says, slowly, and his finger moves, slowly, _slowly_ , just the right side of taunting, slipping inside of Newt. His hips twitch in response and Hermann’s finger withdraws. Newt lets out an audible sob. "You will not, however, use my body, and your body, to escape your, dare I say _our_ current situation. You have. You will not anymore."

 

Newt pointedly doesn’t move, whimpering when Hermann’s index finger joins his middle one and both slip inside his cunt, slow and sure, just inside. This is Tantalus’ torment, just a little bit and not nearly enough. He breathes carefully.

 

"I just want you, man," he says, finally, small and shaking with fake, controlled laughter. Hermann’s thumb flicks quickly at his clit, once.

 

"Perhaps," Hermann answers in a low voice, leaning in and rubbing the tip of his nose to Newt’s, "Or perhaps you are torn, as you have been for years, between your desire for companionship and your desire to be in the limelight alone, showered in praise and glory."

 

Newt moans and this time when his hips twitch Hermann doesn’t pull away but further in, fucking in and out of his cunt with the most unattractive of sounds. He opens his mouth to defend himself and something unhidden in his mind says no. He closes his mouth.

 

"Perhaps, even, perhaps you relied on these creatures for years to grant you that place in the limelight, to fund your travel up the path to glory and now-" Newt gasps and hides his face in the warm, damp curve of Hermann’s neck, skin and mind burning, burning, "-and now, you believe, now there is nothing for you to do and you will be forgotten, or even, God forbid, alone and deserted. Perhaps you might feel useless, expired, obsolete. You were told, and do not make these noises, I was inside your head, I saw these things, you were told you were destined to greatness and now this greatness has been achieved. Is it great enough? What will be next?" 

 

Hermann’s voice is hoarse but sure, even with his mind hazy and his thoughts a foggy mess oozing over Newt’s brain. This is no spur of the moment speech, no angry jab.

 

"When you finished your second doctorate, scant months after the first one, if I remember correctly, Newton," Hermann continues, grinding his fingers into the spongy spot up Newt’s cunt that makes him gasp and swear, "you took a coach to New York City and wandered the streets for two days before coming home. I remember your father-"

 

"Don’t bring my dad into this, dude," Newt grinds out, biting feebly at the fair skin of Hermann’s neck, shaking into his embrace, and moving with his fingers.

 

"Oh, but this whole affair turns you on, doesn’t it? The debasement, and most of it, my dear, the fact that I _know_ you, isn’t that what you longed for, and at the same time dreaded," Hermann’s shaky thumb swipes over Newt’s clit once and he feels it pulsing desperately, "because you feel so _special_. Little boy genius, how could anyone possibly understand your complicated mind, the intricacy of your remarkable brain?"

 

Something is pounding in Newt’s brain, like Hermann is hammering on a closed door. His nose itches. His eye stings. None of this really registers. Next to him Hermann breathes and pushes his thumb into his clit and his fingers into his cunt and Newt comes with the greatest of sobs, his hips twitching away reflexively even as Hermann keeps fucking him, even as the pain in Hermann’s muscles radiates through Newt’s.

 

He’d like to not know how long it lasts. How long he grunts and cries and twitches, draped over Hermann with his forehead mashed into his neck. How long Hermann mutters for, his voice hoarse, with his fingers still inside Newt. He’d like to drift away, but Newt is well too aware of everything, anchored to reality by Hermann even though Hermann is starting to finally rest after being robbed of his own afterglow earlier.

 

When Hermann finally pulls his fingers out, Newt doesn’t need to look to know they’re pruney and numb. He swallows and pulls away from Hermann. There’s a small smear of blood on Hermann’s neck and Newt reflexively swipes at his nose, sitting crosslegged on the bed.

 

"You’ve only been in my head for two minutes," Newt says feebly.

 

Hermann gives him a long, considering look, his hands draped over his chest.

 

"You have been in my head for twelve years."

 

And this time heholds a hand out, palm up over his heart, and Newt takes it.

 

There are words on Hermann’s tongue and in his head. Newt can hear them. He also knows why Hermann doesn’t speak out right now. He remembers being twenty-three and wanting to know everything about Kaiju. He remembers wanting to know everything about Hermann. Newt curls up next to him and looks into the hazy reddened eye that stares right back at his. He swipes his thumb over Hermann’s pulse point and feels the caress, like a tickle, over his own colourful skin. Hermann closes his eyes.

 

He fits himself in the hollows of Hermann’s body, in the nooks and crevices built there by whoever sculpted his body to fit Newt’s so well, and breathes out. He dreams of unbeing -- of being nothing at last but a subdued echo of himself, a wave of resonance inside the pristine walls of Hermann’s head.

 

Newt has been dreaming of this for years.

 

He will probably dream of Hermann for the rest of his life.

 

He breathes, in and out. Beneath skin and bone Hermann’s heart beats to the same rhythm as his, a steady thrum like the neverending ticking of a brand new clock, and the world keeps on turning.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> If you would like to, you can download this work in several formats: [Mobi](http://www.mediafire.com/download/c1qqrrpzdir6n03/Spaces_Between_-_adropofred.mobi), [ePub](http://www.mediafire.com/download/v1wahawmwzy2u0a/Spaces_Between_-_adropofred.epub), or [Pdf](http://www.mediafire.com/view/4kr64p2ps514tna/Spaces_Between_-_adropofred.pdf). You can also find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/aloisfromparis).


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